


By the Numbers

by Kahika



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Angst, Experimental Style, F/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:09:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/pseuds/Kahika
Summary: Where he interprets the world through poetry, she tries to make sense of it through numbers.
Relationships: Turian Vortex Poet/The Girl He Left Behind
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16
Collections: Spectre Requisitions 2020





	By the Numbers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bioticfox (ayambik)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayambik/gifts).



> I didn't quite answer all of your questions about these two but I hope you enjoy the answers I did come up with in this experimental-even-to-me style :D Happy SpecReqs!

2: Years of her pre-military education left when she meets him.

19: Bad movies they both unironically enjoy and make increasingly silly theories and jokes and in his case poems about, a number that increases in years to come.

2: Mothers who think he’s hilarious and a good influence and enjoy when he comes over to hang out.

3: Grandparents whom he charms without even trying.

12,732: Her high score on _Relay Defense_ , which, in so many tries she stops counting, he can’t beat.

2: Parents who turn a blind eye when she brings him home a little past his curfew more than a few times.

10: Months before she declares him her best friend, which military service doesn’t change.

27: Times throughout her service that they manage to see each other in person on leave.

1.6: Terrabytes of vidmail back and forth during her service.

49: Estimated poem forms he tells her about.

3: Poems he writes and cheerily co-credits her on because she helped him count syllables and rearrange words and lines to still get in his meaning, before he gets the hang of that particular structure.

6: Extranet lectures he helps her write, helping her make data science sound both interesting and understandable to the layperson.

2: Civilian job offers these lectures help her get.

2: Non-turian languages he starts learning both to improve his job prospects outside of turian space and to try to write poems in them.

1: Poem he writes which manages to hold its rhyme scheme in both English (the original language this rhyme scheme was invented in) and Danori (his first language).

1: Minimum meal per week eaten together once they’re both living on the Citadel.

1-5: Times per week someone makes a joke about them being perfect for each other in an opposites attract kind of way, since he’s so into words and she’s so into numbers. Every so often that someone is one of their parents.

1-5: Times per week they both laugh it off and deny it.

1-5: Times per week she dies inside.

13: Years she’s been in love with him.

16: Times she thinks about telling him.

16: Times she decides she doesn’t want to lose what they have.

0: Times she’s seen him actually into someone, anyway. Possibly also the number of genders he’s into.

1: Mother she tells this to, so at least the jokes stop from her mothers even if his parents still like to hint that they’d love her as a daughter in law.

2: Parents he loses in the Battle of the Citadel. They were on holiday, visiting him.

1: Month he lives with her after the funeral, his own apartment also destroyed in the Battle.

9: Months of writer’s block after the Battle in which he doesn’t mention any poetry he’s working on, even when she asks directly.

10: Months before he says he’s starting to feel almost like himself again, and thanks her for being there for him, as if she would have done anything else, as if she didn’t know he’d do the same for her if her mothers died under circumstances she felt irrationally guilty for.

2: Times she sees an extranet ad for an ‘Andromeda Initiative’ before she remembers to update her adblockers. (Is it even legal for them to use that dead human Spectre’s image like that?)

2: Weeks until it comes up in the news – the actual news this time, not just the ads. Some weird human thing. She doesn’t bother actively following it, but the media take a liking to it so she learns more anyway.

4: Interviews and briefings that he tells her little about, 3 of which involve inter-system travel.

0: Times he actually said he was job hunting. Also the chance these interviews are for some kind of media thing.

5: Months of this mysterious carry-on.

8: Seconds for him to say he has something to tell her and it’s important and he wants to say it in person, because he’s so excited that he keeps talking around it.

10: Seconds her heart feels like it stops.

1: Actual seconds her heart stops.

32: Minutes to drive to their usual café. Usually 20 but she hits every stoplight on the way.

35: Centimetres between them after he pulls away from a greeting hug. Fewer than usual.

0: Words out of her mouth as he tells her he was accepted onto the Andromeda Initiative and explains exactly what that means, in more detail than the news has been able to give.

600: Years he’ll spend in cryosleep, travelling at FTL through dark space.

2,500,000: Lightyears between the Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way.

100,000: Volunteer colonists who’ll travel to another galaxy – he was one of a lucky few; she’s seen extranet news articles about the protests at the Andromeda Initiative offices on Earth.

2: Words she stammers out to congratulate him.

1: Cryopod on the flagship which could be hers, since he told the recruitment team how talented she is with data.

3: Grandparents who depend on her.

2: Mothers who would never forgive her for leaving.

0: Chance she ever could go with him.

0: Dependents or even family he has in this galaxy. Of course he’s free to go.

0: Seconds for his face to fall.

7: Times over the coming months he tries to talk her into at least applying or going to one of the briefings to see if she’s interested.

5: Times over the coming months she tries to talk him into staying. There are too many unknown numbers and risks in this thing for her liking.

9: Times she wonders if he feels he has nothing left in this galaxy to stay for, not even her.

9: More times she thinks about telling him she loves him.

8: Times she decides she doesn’t want to know if that’s not enough for him to stay.

1: Time she decides she doesn’t want to be the only thing he stays for, doesn’t want him to eventually resent her for denying him a whole other galaxy to explore and write about and escape his parents’ deaths in.

126: Days until she’ll never see him again when she starts counting down.

8: Percent increase in time he spends with her until departure day.

400: Percent increase in time he spends outside the Serpent Nebula preparing for the trip, else, he says, he’d love to spend more time with her while he still can.

12: Hours until she’ll never see him again.

5: Hugs at the spaceport.

6: Seconds longer in his arms than usual.

1: Sad laugh she manages when he tells her that in 600 years, he’ll write a poem about this.

2: Words in their language to say she loves him. Words that she doesn’t say.


End file.
